Thursday, 18 February 2010

Digital Image Processing, Playboy and The Most Famous Image in Computer
Science

Have you ever seen this girl? Odds are — if you've ever dealt with image processing as a computer science discipline, then you had — in fact, many times.

You can probably pick any book on the subject and you'll find this picture — perhaps, significantly more than once. I found myself interested in tracking down, who's the girl on this picture; obviously, all I knew was her name — Lena. Quick search has proven that I was not the only one who found it interesting. Go to http://lenna.org and find out for yourself, how Playboy's Miss November '72 has become the icon of the computer science. Here you can find the full page scan — slightly NSFW, but she's damn good anyway (and I can understand why computer scientists preferred her to their usual rabbits and landscapes).